HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LYRA JANE!!!!

My first car was a 1979 Dodge Omni 024. It was not especially reliable.

My first car was a 1960-something Thunderbird, white with black interior. It was a boy magnet. My stepfather sold it when I went to college and bought me a Mazda 626. Practical, but, alas.

My first car was a 1978 Mercury Marquis Brougham. Proving that my lack of car-buying sense started a long time ago.

Happy Birthday Lyra Jane

Kathy, have you reached them yet?

The message on the SVDP store phone line says that they're not taking any clothes, either--apparently, they've been inundated with so many that it's going to take their sorters some time to go through them all. They're not ruling out that they might take clothes in the future, though.

Oh, and in a completely first world cereal post:

TiVo slashes price of video recorders

TiVo Inc., seeking to prevent consumers from choosing rival digital-video recorders, slashed the price of its machines by as much as half.

Customers who sign up for a one-year subscription will get a $150 mail-in rebate, bringing the price of TiVo's most basic box to $49.99 from a previously discounted $99, Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo said Tuesday. The promotion will end Nov. 27.

The discount cuts the set-top box's price to its lowest level ever. It's part of a plan by TiVo Chief Executive Thomas Rogers to attract subscribers as a marketing deal with satellite-television provider DirecTV Group Inc. ends in October. TiVo in August forecast a loss of as much as $25 million this quarter.

My first car was a 1985 VW Jetta. But I learned to drive on a 1977 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz custom built for a descendant of one of the Khans (I think Kubla, but my history is fuzzy.) It was a monster. Two enormous doors, probably lined with bullet-proof materials. The headlights had these round lenses that led one of my brothers to dub it "The Owlcar." Enough space in back to have a threesome (if I knew what that was when I was 15 1/2). Chrome fake "luggage straps" across the trunk.

One evening my father decided that I should drive this thing on the Muskogee Turnpike from US 69 back home. I'd had some practice on the station wagon, but the Caddy wasn't a station wagon, it was a tank. And I quickly learned that this tank pulled so hard to the right that the full weight and muscular force of my 150 pound swimmer's body was required to keep it from going in the ditch all 40 miles home.

Eventually, my parents sold the car to a dealer, who proceeded to sell it to a local pimp. My father traded in the '72 Mercedes (I loved driving that car, but the frame had seen too many Minnesota winters to stay together) and got the '85 Jetta, which became my first car until I went off to CU.

Huh. Does this mean, this is a good time to buy a TiVo, or, the company's going under, don't buy one?

I've got to say, now that I have the DVR, it just makes me want TiVo more and more.